The life you always wanted will come back to haunt you, will be the rope that will hang you. Any sweetness there once was has all but gone; all that remains is the lingering bitterness of love gone south. Success is never what you truly believed it would be. Ambition is always elusive.

    Never before did you have to face this fact but now you smoke yourself into an early grave to stave off the hunger pangs and disappointment that life has not turned out the way you wanted it to. Convictions are only good for those who have thrown away life, you find; they are straws to be clutched at, the sods of earth that fall away as one loses footing and slides.

    You empty the last of the tea from the pot: stewed, predictably. How it pains you to be alone, yet could you truly imagine anybody sharing this space with you? This room is a festering sore writ ten feet cubed. If the loneliness does not kill you first, then it will probably be the ignorant defiance of your situation.

    "It's not as bad as all that," you chant to yourself. Of course you do, in vain, and secretly you already know that no matter how many times you repeat the words they will never be fulfilled.

    The gas. The curtains. The razor and the bathtub. The balcony. The electricity supply. The kitchen knives. You eye them all, evaluating their efficiency, just like the friends you desperately wanted to have but never did eyed you.

    And the only thing that stops you is that everybody thought you were such a happy person.